One good thing about health reform? We’re behind, so can follow: Manning

Preston Manning says the sluggish pace of health care reform in Canada has created an opportunity to borrow successful elements from other countries to build a strong system at home.

With chronic underperformance, long wait times and spiralling costs, the former Reform Party leader said the system is unsustainable — especially since an aging population is poised to place an even greater burden on the system. Canada should not look to any one country for inspiration, he said, but rather draw on success stories from around the world.

“This is maybe one advantage of Canada being behind in this area,” Manning told iPolitics. “We’re a late adopter, and we can look at what these other countries have done, particularly how they’ve managed this public-private enterprise. We don’t have to start from scratch.”

Switzerland, Sweden and Australia have embraced new models worthy of examination, he said.

Manning says polarized debate has stalled concrete actions — including a “two-track” approach that would allow private insurance in a universal system.

Today’s pressing debate should not be about public or private, he said, but rather about the appropriate relationship between public and private in Canada’s universal system.

During the heat of the last campaign, all main party leaders — including Prime Minister Stephen Harper — pledged a continued six per cent funding escalator after the health funding accord expires in 2014. But as the federal government and the provinces begin to negotiate the next-generation funding formula, Manning insists throwing more money at the system won’t solve its fundamental problems.

While he hopes provinces will advance fresh ideas to bring competition and innovation to the universal system, Manning said it’s also time for an “issue campaign” by those who don’t have pecuniary or political motivations to lead the charge for reforms. He compared it to the coalition that pushed for deficit reductions in the 1990s, beginning with think-tanks and associations and growing to the public before it was advanced by the federal government.

“There has to be an issue campaign organized by non-partisan, non-political actors to get the public onto that ground, and then the political people will follow,” he said. “Then it will be legitimate to discuss it.”

Manning, president of the conservative Manning Centre for Building Democracy, has long maintained private-sector involvement would improve efficiency and cut public costs, but he said major change is more important than ever.

“If you’re in financial trouble, you can not go fast enough to get out of it,” he said. “I think that’s the case with health care.”

While in the past he has railed against judicial activism, Manning said ultimately it could be the Supreme Court that forces changes to the Health Act or politicians to act.

“Waiting lines at a certain point are an infringement of your constitutional right to life,” he said. “You don’t have a constitutional obligation to suffer and die in a waiting line waiting for publicly administered health care if there are other options.”